


Star Sailors and Space Dogs

by Cuda (Scylla)



Category: Supernatural, Torchwood
Genre: Dogs, Don't copy to another site, Far Future, Happy Ending, Harkstiel, Homecoming, M/M, Post-Canon, Reunions, Snow, SuperWood, Superwho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 08:36:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16889211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scylla/pseuds/Cuda
Summary: Jack Harkness doesn't keep pets. Until he does. And, as is the case of Jack doingmostthings he otherwise doesn't do, Castiel is partly responsible. Either way, Laika is theirs - and mostly his, if he's honest - and this is just one moment of a three-legged space dog's lifetime of moments with a pair of immortal wanderers. A long cruise over, a far-flung planet, a much missed companion, a snowy night, and a little dog.





	Star Sailors and Space Dogs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janto321 (FaceofMer)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaceofMer/gifts).



> _To enhance your read, listen to Pentatonix' cover of _Hallelujah,_ [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRP8d7hhpoQ)._

The dog knew something was up.  
  
Laika did what even the best dogs do: get old. Jack made up a pad of blankets for her creaky bones near the repair bay. They could see one another that way, even while Jack was in the pit beneath the bay, and Laika’s joints were saved from the cold concrete floor.  
  
He caught a flicker of motion from the corner of his eye, and glanced over to see her little body frozen in place. Laika’s wedge head pointed to the roof, where every quivering sense now trained. Her silky ears, normally flopped in her eyes, fell back with the extreme tilt of her head.  
  
If dogs could fly, the hope in her could launch Laika like an arrow. Jack quickened his pace, twisting out the radiation filter with a grimace. One thing turned the terrier’s head like that, and Jack didn’t want to have greasy hands and a bay leaking radiation when it arrived.  
  
He dropped the exhausted filter into the lead-lined bin at his feet and sealed it with a kick. He’d ship it off that afternoon to be scrubbed. Maybe. Provided he wasn’t otherwise naked and occupied.  
  
Jack rolled his eyes at himself, took a deep breath, and huffed it out with a self-depreciating grin as he jogged up the steps from the pit. He was ridiculous, but might as well be ridiculous, in this oddly quiet spot. It was nice to miss someone alive.  
  
He stripped off his gloves and scrubbed the grease from under his fingernails with a handful of gritty soap. Laika was up now, toenails tatting with her three-beat gait across the hard floor. She reared up and pawed Jack’s pant leg, dark liquid eyes worried. Jack dried his hands and scuffed his fingers behind Laika’s ears.  
  
In times past, Castiel arrived like a sudden gust of wind. He was still stirring the breeze these days, but with the eight solar engines of a golden suncruiser. The thing was a century past its prime and looked more like an old Terran warplane than a spaceship. It still made a hell of an entrance. Laika lunged away from him; a meteor barking hallelujah all the way to the bay doors. Jack caught the humming in the air overhead now, and punched the door switch with a laugh.  
  
It didn’t snow here.  
  
It was snowing now.  
  
Jack caught Laika by her nubby tail at the door; paused her trajectory long enough to scoop her up, and pressed his back to the wall. Castiel’s ship soared overhead to land, owl-soft, on the asphalt pad beside Jack’s workshop. The snow hissed away as it met the ship’s superheated golden flanks. Hot wind pushed the snow away a moment; flattened Jack and Laika against the shop as the suncruiser powered down.  
  
The curtain of snow resumed, flickering moving reflections along the ship’s shining sides. The pilot’s dome popped up with a hydraulic hiss, and Castiel stood up in the cockpit.  
  
“How was the trip?” Jack shouted up at him. Laika struggled until Jack let her go, where she promptly did a war dance of joy under the nose of the ship.  
  
“Um, slow,” Castiel replied. He pushed up his goggles to smile at Jack, eyes as blue as an autumn Terran sky. He leaped from the cockpit and Jack caught him, arms the banks of safe harbors around one another.  
  
Castiel’s mouth found his, lips chilly from the flight, tongue hot against Jack’s with welcome, the long voyage over.  
  
Laika sewed them in with dancing circles, an old dog no more.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr, November 8, 2016.


End file.
